Asunto: [NT] LaBamba

I expected 4:0 defeat before the match so from that perspective mission accomplished :-)
I don't think I could have picked better tactic, it mirrored theirs perfectly, I even set the height of the strikers well, but at the end their players were far too strong for us (mark 81.7) and often dribbled through our defenders with ease..

Bad news is injuries for superdivine form Katongo and our best defender again in superdivine form Cole who will be very missed against Singapore..
(editado)

So the WCQ is over. Our last match was a head to head match up over the 3rd spot in the group. Singapore needed a draw and we had to win to move over them.
It was a weird match, the stats look even, but I have to say Singapore looked far stronger on the pitch, their offensive players (both wings and strikers) dribbled through our defenders FROM THE FRONT the whole match, often through multiple defenders, it looked like we are playing Germany..and we were lucky many times. On the other hand I don't think we dribbled any of their players from the front the whole match, on the contrary they stopped us from behind all the time...
The red card probably saved us.

I think this victory and the 3rd spot in the Group was tha maximum for this team..Germany and Greece were on a different level and we stood no chance against them in both matches..
We were also lucky that almost all of our key players kept high form throughout the WCQ so I think we played to our full potential..it can unfortunately only get worse from this point..

Looking at future seasons, the great U21 generation from my days (Methula and co..) should be the corner stone of the team (the whole defense is basically set from them already) and should remain fairly competitive especially if Serola is going to be trained up to his potential..(fingers crossed..but his owner is not communicating with me).
So that's another at least 5-6 seasons we should be able to play marks around 65..after that it will go down fast as there are no quality NT prospects coming from the U21 team..(outside Arthur of course :-) and there will be also less and less players to choose from if we get into form/cards trouble..

Unfortunately we are lacking defmids..Zulu and Rhode are getting older and it will be very hard to replace them..Our best defmid prospect Molefe got killed by the previous owner with pace training..
(editado)

Yip, the future is looking bleak. Unless, by some miracle we get many South African users who properly play the game and train their youngsters correctly, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. It's a damn shame.

Yeah the chance of that happening is not very high..

Hayastan lost their last chance on WCQ today by losing against Spain. We didn't deserve that kind of loss though.. anyway, SA is indeed in deep trouble. Doesn't seem SA will maintain their current ranking much longer despite maximum efforts :/

Well we were quite overachieving with that ranking while you were the coach..but to keep that ranking is impossible based on the user base here (that number is 3 now and big part of the NT team came out from MarcL's youth school), we are one of the smallest, if not the smallest nation in sokker..realistically we should be much lower..and we'll probably get there in time..

How is the future of Hayastan looking?

Couldn't agree more.

And imo the future looks bright for Hayastan.. if you check the age of some of our key players, you'll see they're far from retiring.. Our U25/U26 gets near 70 rating easily. No surprise at all with over 20 very active managers who know how to arrange a decent youth school.

Wow that sounds primising..more motivation for you at least ;-)

Well, I'm actually quiting my job as NT coach at the end of the season.. Lack of time :p I would've stopped last season but the community didn't agree ;-)

Election time again, cast your votes here please

Good luck! ;-)

Oh and btw we still almost reached 70 mark (69.8) in a win against Senegal (2:0) last week with U25 squad (22y, 3x 24y,4x 25y) + 3 older players (26y, 30y 32y). So the near future is not all that bad..

I'm glad I've found a GK trainer (through 3 managers :-) for him when he was 18 :-)

He is still getting pace training..GK future for SA NT is save for another 10 seasons at least :-)

Jeffrey Tavlibudine, Age:22
club: FC PUMKA HD, country: South Africa
Value: 3 208 750 $, Wage: 25 975 $
very good (9) Form, very good (9) Tactical discipline
height: 173

poor (3) stamina, superdivine (18) keeper
brilliant (14) pace, weak (4) defender
weak (4) technique, adequate (6) playmaker
formidable (11) passing, hopeless (1) striker

wow, fantastic!

That is so awesome I can almost start to cry. Hehehe

We got into an early lead, but than lost Zulu in 10th minute due to red card. Tough to play team like Turkey with 10 men for 80 minutes..